RAIPUR: In what can be described as a momentous accomplishment of local entrepreneurship zeal, a group of tribal women, who are mostly school drop-outs from north Chhattisgarh, have collaborated with India’s leading e-commerce marketplace Amazon.in to sell their rustic line of authentic eco-friendly products online.
These women came together to form a cooperative-Mahila Udyami Bahuddeshiy Sahakari Samiti (MUBSS) around mid-2017 in Sarguja, around 300 km north of Chhattisgarh’s capital, Raipur.
Over 250 women from around 30 villages, work cohesively empowering themselves towards contributing to the socio-economic development of their families and community.
The cooperative, to begin with, started selling multi-utility eco-friendly cloth bags stitched by the women from rural hamlets.
The income of these rural entrepreneurs was boosted by partnering with the online marketplace which helped them in expanding their consumer-base for their sustainable products.The tribal women entrepreneurs besides making cloth bags further expanded their area of works to prepare quality food products, spices, engage in mushroom cultivation, organic farming, making of sanitary pads and nutritious mid-day meal for school children.
The cooperative’s micro-enterprises recorded an extraordinary year-on-year growth of 100 per cent over the last two years — from `30 lakh (2017-18) to `1.25 crore (ongoing year of 2019-20).“The collaboration with Amazon India is a major milestone in our journey of endurance and hard work and helping families to become self-reliant, confident and financially and socially empowered,” Vedmati Uike, vice-president of MUBSS told this newspaper.
“We are excited to offer our customers access to eco-friendly products from women entrepreneurs of MUBSS, and augment opportunities for of income to them,” said Pranav Bhasin, Director, Seller Experience, Amazon India.